iPlant SSWAP ( Simple Semantic Web Architecture and Protocol ) enables semantic pipelines for biodiversity

Real-time response is a basic characteristic of the Web. Yet semantic reasoning at transaction-time supporting real-time response remains challenging. Here we report how the iPlant Semantic Web Platform uses SSWAP (Simple Semantic Web Architecture and Protocol; http://sswap.info) for transaction-time reasoning, service discovery, workflow construction, and execution. The platform enables users at web sites, such as TreeGenes’ DiversiTree and CartograTree, to select data and use it for real-time semantic discovery into a knowledge base of semantic web services. The platform uses first-order, description logic reasoning and just-in-time ontologies to allow users to drag-n-drop independent, distributed semantic web services into a semantic pipeline. This enables biodiversity research using data sets from TreeGenes, FLUXNET (Ameriflux), WorldClim, and TRY-DB integrated under a common web front-end called CartograTree. Scientific use cases are for tree scientists to associate phenotype and/or environmental traits with underlying genotypes in geo-referenced forest trees across a distribution